Tamarisk proves to be more complicated than simple eradication

Browned tamarisk lines the banks of the Colorado River as efforts to eliminate the invasive species appear to be working. The small tamarisk leaf beetle, imported from China, is used to control the non-native and invasive tamarisk plant.

Francisco Kjolseth/ The Salt Lake Tribune file photo

Imported from China, the tamarisk leaf beetle is used to control the non-native and invasive tamarisk. Tamarisk was brought to North America as an ornamental plant and has displaced native vegetation along rivers in the West.

CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK, Utah  Larry Aberback studied the banks of the Colorado River in quiet reflection and then posed a question many of the others on the commercially guided float trip had silently wondered.

What happened to all those dying bushes? Is it drought? the elementary school teacher from New York City asked during a trip through Cataract Canyon in July, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. Its kind of sad.

Sad, in this case, is in the eyes of beholder. The dying stands of bushes are tamarisk  a non-native, invasive species from Eurasia introduced to the American West more than a century ago. Tamarisk has taken over the banks of many Western rivers and is particularly thick along the Colorado in Canyonlands.

People sitting in the raft next to Aberback had a totally different view of the dying bushes. As Westerners involved in the environment, they saw the defoliating of tamarisk as a step in the right direction to allowing the return of native species.

The question then remains: Is the death of tamarisk sad or long overdue?

National Park Service officials say evidence of tamarisk along the river corridor dates back to the early 1900s. Pictures of tamarisk from 1914 show it was well established by then. Controlled flows from dams upstream seem to have helped the invasive species thrive starting in the 1950s long before 257,400 acres in southeast Utah became Canyonlands National Park in 1964. The park was eventually expanded to more than 337,000 acres. Some groups and citizens are now seeking further protection of the land around the park in the form of a proposed Greater Canyonlands National Monument.

The war against tamarisk in the West has taken many forms through the years  cutting, burning and poisoning  but researchers with the U.S. Department of Agriculture finally found something that appears to be making a major difference by visiting the homeland of the plant to bring it to the battle.

Tamarisk leaf beetles were released along the Colorado River in 2004, upstream of Canyonlands National Park. Other releases happened in 2005 and 2006. It didnt take long before the work of the beetles was evident along the entire stretches of both the Green and Colorado rivers within the park.

The beetles are still at work  it takes several cycles of infestations to actually kill tamarisk stands  but some wonder if it was necessary and others filed a lawsuit against the Department of Agriculture to re-evaluate the program.

Some people are looking for a return to the (19th-century explorer) John Wesley Powell times. We will never see that. We have these large dams that control the flows and we have manipulated all these different elements, said Steve Young, a longtime backcountry river ranger in Canyonlands. The system was kind of going into a balance with tamarisk and now we have screwed it up again.

For decades, tamarisk was viewed as a water-sucking, wildfire-enhancing, bank-choking, do-nothing-for-wildlife invader. Federal and state governments continue to spend millions in an effort to control tamarisk.

More recently, researchers are finding tamarisk does have positive impacts on river ecosystems and some wildlife species have figured out how to use it. Birds common to riparian areas often use tamarisk for nesting, including the endangered southwestern willow flycatcher.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the Department of Agriculture stopped releasing beetles in response to the 2009 lawsuit brought by the Center for Biological Diversity to protect species like the willow flycatcher, but the cat was already out of the bag, so to speak.

Given that the beetles are already on the ground this was a less than satisfactory result, said Noah Greenwald, endangered species program director for the Center for Biological Diversity. We are not fans of tamarisk, but simply removing it with an invasive species only completes half the job because it fails to address the changes in hydrology and habitat that let tamarisk take over in the first place and thus provide no assurance that native riparian vegetation will take tamarisks place. This is harmful to the flycatcher and many other species.

Canyonlands National Park faces invasive species issue

Francisco Kjolseth/ The Salt Lake Tribune file photo

Browned tamarisk lines the banks of the Colorado River as efforts to eliminate the invasive species appear to be working. The small tamarisk leaf beetle, imported from China, is used to control the non-native and invasive tamarisk plant.

Francisco Kjolseth/ The Salt Lake Tribune file photo

Imported from China, the tamarisk leaf beetle is used to control the non-native and invasive tamarisk. Tamarisk was brought to North America as an ornamental plant and has displaced native vegetation along rivers in the West.